Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Pride & Prejudice, Tom Jones, and Jacob & Esau

In Janeites, Jane Fox wrote: “You mentioned Peyton Place. Lovely notion. We could
also say [Jane Austen] could have written something similar to Tom Jones about her society. “

Jane, you just had what I call a Trojan Horse Moment,
because on some subconscious level I believe you realized that Jane Austen DID
write something similar to Tom Jones—it’s
called the shadow story of Pride &
Prejudice!!!!

And you’ve actually given me the prompt to provide another
piece of the interpretation I started a few days ago with Part One of the
evidence for Elizabeth having REALLY been into Wickham in a very intense,
sexual way, and vice versa, in Pride & Prejudice.

I.e., what I see going on between Elizabeth and Wickham in
those few chapters when their romance briefly bursts into bright flame, before
it is abruptly extinguished, is very much like the sparks that fly between
Sophie Western and Tom Jones.

And, in the shadow story of P&P, as Linda Berdoll
recognized a decade ago, Wickham is actually the half brother of Darcy, i.e., they
share the same father ---just think Jacob (Darcy) and Esau (Wickham).

But here’s the ironic twist in JA’s allusion to Fielding’s
masterpiece. In the shadow story of P&P, Wickham is the hero, Tom Jones, while
Darcy is the sleazy hypocritical villain, Blifil ---except that while in Tom
Jones, the story ends as comedy, because Tom gets the heroine, whereas in the
shadow story ofP&P, there’s a
strong tragic flavor, because it’s the Blifil who gets the Sophie, by successful
manipulation of his brother’s good natured but carnal weakness.

Definitely not a happy ending, but a cautionary tale about
the even more dangerous sort of suitor, the kind who pretend to reform, but
really are all about Winning the Girl (and thereby the Game).

Jane Fox also wrote: “It would be fun to read a novel based
on Emma with all of Arnie's imaginative
twists. How about it, Arnie? But if you write it, put is firmly in the society
of its time.”

Whereas I know that I am actually just using my imagination
to decode the shadow story that Jane Austen herself wrote. And that shadow
story was very much a story set in the society of her time as it actually existed---in
all its horribly anti-female bias that was denied by the powers that be.

Don’t believe The Myth of Jane Austen, which still widely
prevails among Janeites---it’s was a mirage then, and it’s a mirage today.

And you’re right, Jane Austen’s shadow stories ARE fabulous
stories, that have never (yet) been told properly, because I’ve only ever hinted
at various pieces of the six of them. But I WILL tell them as a coherent whole
soon, and I hope you will enjoy them, however you choose to see them.

I can only reiterate what I’ve said a hundred times before –I
could never, on my own, have invented such a perfectly interlocked plot of the
shadow story of Emma, where Jane
Austen keeps twelve dishes (main characters) spinning at the top of twelve
poles….

…and yet never drops a single one --- and this is while, in
a parallel fictional universe, she keeps
those same twelve dishes spinning in a DIFFERENT pattern than in the overt
story.

They both work perfectly—but everything is topsy-turvy
between them. What a magnificent even miraculous artistic achievement on her
part.

In short, I am not a fictional genius, as she was—I am just
a master decoder of the handiwork of fictional geniuses, and that is good
enough for me—it requires every ounce of creative imagination I can summon up!

And remember what DW Harding wrote 75 years ago:

"…her books are, as
she meant them to be, read and enjoyed by precisely the sort of people whom she
disliked; she is a literary classic of the society which attitudes like hers,
held widely enough, would undermine."

DW Harding would, I
believe, have been thrilled to learn that there were alternative versions of
each of her novels which could be read and enjoyed by precisely the sort of
people whom she LIKED.

Cheers,ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on
Twitter

P.S.: Jennifer
Preston Wilson was the first, in 2004, to notice that the story of Jacob and
Esau was played out in P&P. However, her analysis was based on her reading
of what i call the overt story of P&P. As I indicate, above, the Biblical
tale is a much closer fit to the shadow story of P&P, in which Darcy, like
Jacob, tricks his brother twice and gets away with it both times, and walks off
with the birthright that makes him Israel.

Similarly,
there have been Austen scholars who’ve noticed that Tom Jones lurks behind P&P, but they, like Jennifer Preston
Wilson, could only interpret that allusion through the wrong lens of the overt
story of P&P, when the shadow story is so much closer to Fielding’s
masterful plot.

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A lovely bit of praise from my youngest (at heart) supporter in Seattle:

"...Two sessions were outstanding: Juliet McMasters on the more subtle, deeper meanings of "Northanger Abbey" and a Darcy-like young lawyer, Arnie Perlstein, who revealed his very plausible theory that the "shadow story" behind much of Jane Austen's work is the horror of multiple childbirth and women's deaths. I am a Jane-Austen-as-feminist person and this really resonated with me!"

Thank you, Mary!

"Arnie's theories [about Austen and Shakespeare] may strain credulity, but so much the greater his triumph if they turn out to have persuasive force after they are properly presented and maturely considered. That is what publication is all about"

"When great or unexpected events fall out upon the stage of this sublunary world—the mind of man, which is an inquisitive kind of a substance, naturally takes a flight behind the scenes to see what is the cause and first spring of them."--Tristram Shandy

About Me

I'm a 65 year old independent scholar (still) working on a book project about the SHADOW STORIES of Jane Austen's novels (and Shakespeare's plays). I first read Austen in 1995, an American male real estate lawyer, i.e., a Janeite outsider. I therefore never "learned" that there was no secret subtext in her novels. All I did was to closely read and reread her novels, while participating in stimulating online group readings. Then, in 2002, I whimsically wondered whether Willoughby stalked Marianne Dashwood and staged their “accidental” meeting. I retraced his steps, followed the textual “bread crumbs”, and verified my hunch. I've since made numerous similar discoveries about offstage scheming by various characters. In hindsight, it was my luck not only to be a lawyer, but also a lifelong solver of NY Times and other difficult American crossword puzzles. These both trained me to spot complex patterns based on fragmentary data, to interpret cryptic clues of all kinds, and, above all, not to give up until I’ve completed the puzzle--and literary sleuthing Jane Austen's novels (and Shakespeare's plays) is, bar none, the best puzzle solving in the world!